from killing our Saviour, who had highly provoked them by a parable, setting out their deserved and approaching destruction. They durst not do it for fear of a tumult among the people, seeing they looked on him as a prophet. Thus God overawes the hearts of innumerable persons in the world every day, and causeth them to desist from attempting to bring forth the sins which they had conceived. Difficulties they shall be sure to meet withal, yea, it is likely, if they should attempt it, it would prove impossible for them to accomplish. We owe much of our quiet in this world, unto the efficacy given to this consideration in the hearts of men by the Holy Ghost: adulteries, rapines, murders, are obviated and stifled by it. Men would engage into them daily, but that they judge it impossible for them to fulfil what they aim at.

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[2dly.] God doth it by an argument taken ab incommodo,' from the inconveniencies, evils, and troubles that will befall men in the pursuit of sin. If they follow it, this or that inconvenience will ensue; this trouble, this evil, temporal or eternal. And this argument, as managed by the Spirit of God, is the great engine in his hand, whereby he casts up banks and gives bounds to the lusts of men, that they break not out to the confusion of all that order and beauty which yet remains in the works of his hands. Paul gives us the general import of this argument, Rom. ii. 14, 15. For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing, or else excusing one another.' If any men in the world may be thought to be given up to pursue and fulfil all the sins that their lusts can conceive, it is those that have not the law, to whom the written law of God doth not denounce the evil that attends it. But though they have it not, saith the apostle, they shew forth the work of it, they do many things which it requireth, and forbear or abstain from many things that it forbiddeth, and so shew forth its work and efficacy. But whence is it that they so do? Why their thoughts accuse or excuse them. It is from the consideration and arguings that they have within themselves about sin and its consequents, which

prevail upon them to abstain from many things that their hearts would carry them out unto. For conscience is a man's prejudging of himself, with respect unto the future judgment of God. Thus Felix was staggered in his pursuit of sin, when he trembled at Paul's preaching of righteousness and judgment to come; Acts xxiv. 25. So Job tells us that the consideration of punishment from God hath a strong influence on the minds of men to keep them from sin; chap. xxxi. 1-3. How the Lord makes use of that consideration, even towards his own, when they have broken the cords of his love and cast off the rule of his grace for a season, I have before declared.

[3dly.] God doth this same work by making effectual an argument, ab inutili,' from the unprofitableness of the thing that men are engaged in. By this were the brethren of Joseph stayed from slaying him, Gen. xxxvii. 26, 27. What profit is it,' say they, if we slay our brother and conceal his blood?' We shall get nothing by it; it will bring in no advantage or satisfaction unto us. And the heads of this way of God's obstructing conceived sin, or the springs of these kinds of arguments, are so many and various, that it is impossible to insist particularly upon them. There is nothing present or to come, nothing belonging to this life or another, nothing desirable or undesirable, nothing good or evil, but, at one time or another, an argument may be taken from it for the obstructing of sin.

[4thly.] God accomplisheth this work by arguments taken ab honesto,' from what is good and honest, what is comely, praiseworthy, and acceptable unto himself. This is the great road wherein he walks with the saints under their temptations, or in their conceptions of sin. He recovers effectually upon their minds a consideration of all those springs and motives to obedience, which are discovered and proposed in the gospel, some at one time, some at another. He minds them of his own love, mercy, and kindness; his eternal love, with the fruits of it, whereof themselves have been made partakers. He minds them of the blood of his Son, his cross, sufferings, tremendous undertaking in the work of mediation, and the concernment of his heart, love, honour, name, in their obedience; minds them of the love of the Spirit, with all his consolations which they have been

made partakers of, and privileges wherewith by him they have been intrusted: minds them of the gospel, the glory and beauty of it, as it is revealed unto their souls; minds them of the excellency and comeliness of obedience, of their performance of that duty they owe to God, that peace, quietness, and serenity of mind, that they have enjoyed therein. On the other side he minds them of being a provocation by sin unto the eyes of his glory, saying in their hearts, Do not that abominable thing which my soul hateth'; minds them of their wounding the Lord Jesus Christ, and putting him to shame; of their grieving the Holy Spirit, whereby they are sealed to the day of redemption; of their defiling his dwelling-place; minds them of the reproach, dishonours, scandal, which they bring on the gospel and the profession thereof; minds them of the terrors, darkness, wounds, want of peace, that they may bring upon their own souls. From these and the like considerations doth God put a stop to the law of sin in the heart, that it shall not go on to bring forth the evil which it hath conceived. I could give instances in arguments of all these several kinds recorded in the Scripture, but it would be too long a work for us, who are now engaged in a design of another nature. But one or two examples may be mentioned. Joseph resists his first temptation on one of these accounts, Gen. xxxix. 9. 'How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?' The evil of sinning against God, his God, that consideration alone detains him from the least inclination to his temptation. It is sin against God to whom I owe all obedience, the God of my life and of all my mercies: I will not do it. The argument wherewith Abigail prevailed on David, 1 Sam. xxv. 31. to withhold him from self-revenge and murder, was of the same nature, and he acknowledgeth that it was from the Lord, ver. 32. I shall add no more, for all the Scripture motives which we have to duty, made effectual by grace, are instances of this way of God's procedure.

Sometimes, I confess, God secretly works the hearts of men by his own finger, without the use and means of such arguments as those insisted on, to stop the progress of sin. So he tells Abimelech, Gen. xx. 6. I have withheld thee from sinning against me.' Now this could not be done by any of the arguments which we have insisted on, because

Abimelech knew not that the thing he intended was sin; and therefore he pleads that in the integrity of his heart and innocency of his hands' he did it, ver. 5. God turned about his will and thoughts, that he should not accomplish his intention; but by what ways or means is not revealed. Nor is it evident what course he took in the change of Esau's heart, when he came out against his brother to destroy him, Gen. xxxiii. 4. Whether he stirred up in him a fresh spring of natural affections, or caused him to consider what grief by this means he should bring to his aged father, who loved him so tenderly; or whether, being now grown great and wealthy, he more and more despised the matter of difference between him and his brother, and so utterly slighted it, is not known. It may be God did it by an immediate powerful act of his Spirit upon his heart, without any actual intervening of these or any of the like considerations. Now, though the things mentioned are in themselves at other times feeble and weak, yet when they are managed by the Spirit of God to such an end and purpose, they certainly become effectual, and are the matter of his preventing grace.

2dly. God prevents the bringing forth of conceived sin by real spiritual saving grace, and that either in the first conversion of sinners, or in the following supplies of it.

(1st.) This is one part of the mystery of his grace and love. He meets men sometimes in their highest resolutions for sin, with the highest efficacy of his grace. Hereby he manifests the power of his own grace, and gives the soul a farther experience of the law of sin, when it takes such a farewell of it, as to be changed in the midst of its resolutions to serve the lusts thereof. By this he melts down the lusts of men, causeth them to wither at the root, that they shall no more strive to bring forth what they have conceived, but be filled with shame and sorrow at their conception. An example and instance of this proceeding of God, for the use and instruction of all generations, we have in Paul. His heart was full of wickedness, blasphemy, and persecution; his conception of them was come unto rage and madness, and a full purpose of exercising them all to the utmost; so the story relates it, Acts ix. so himself declares the state to have been with him, Acts xxvi. 9-12. 1 Tim. i. 13. In the midst of all this violent pursuit of sin, a voice from heaven shuts up the womb

and dries the breasts of it, and he cries, 'Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?' Acts ix. 6. The same person seems to intimate, that this is the way of God's procedure with others, even to meet them with his converting grace in the height of their sin and folly, 1 Tim. i. 16. For he himself, he says, was a pattern of God's dealing with others; as he dealt with him, so also would he do with some such-like sinners. ‹ For this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all long-suffering, as a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting.' And we have not a few examples of it in our own days. Sundry persons on set purpose going to this or that place to deride and scoff at the dispensation of the word, have been met withal in the very place wherein they designed to serve their lusts and Satan, and have been cast down at the foot of God. This way of God's dealing with sinners is at large set forth, Job xxxiii. 15-18. Dionysius the Areopagite is another instance of this work of God's grace and love. Paul is dragged either by him or before him, to plead for his life, as a setter forth of strange gods, which at Athens was death by the law. In the midst of this frame of spirit God meets with him by converting grace, sin withers in the womb, and he cleaves to Paul and his doctrine; Acts xvii. 18-34. The like dispensation towards Israel we have, Hos. xi. 7-10. But there is no need to insist on more instances of this observation. God is pleased to leave no generation unconvinced of this truth, if they do but attend to their own experiences, and the examples of this work of his mercy amongst them. Every day, one or other is taken in the fulness of the purpose of his heart to go on in sin, in this or that sin, and is stopped in his course by the power of converting grace.

(2dly.) God doth it by the same grace in the renewed communications of it, that is, by special assisting grace. This is the common way of his dealing with believers in this case. That they also, through the deceitfulness of sin, may be carried on to the conceiving of this or that sin, was before declared. God puts a stop to their progress, or rather, to the prevalency of the law of sin in them, and that by giving in unto them special assistances needful for their preservation and deliverance. As David says of himself, Psal. lxxiii. 2. His 'feet were almost gone, his steps had